The mother of James Bulger, the toddler tortured and murdered by two other children near Liverpool in the UK in 1993 in what became a high-profile case, says a film about the crime should have its Oscar nomination revoked.
Denise Fergus said she was "disgusted and upset" that Detainment, by Irish director Vincent Lambe, received a nod from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the Best Live Action Short Film category.
The 30-minute film is a dramatisation of the police interrogation of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, the two 10-year-olds eventually convicted of murdering James, whose body was found on a train track two days after his abduction from a shopping centre.
"It's one thing making a film like this without contacting or getting permission from James's family but another to have a child re-enact the final hours of James's life before he was brutally murdered and making myself and my family have to relive this all over again," Ms Fergus said in a statement posted on Twitter.
"After everything I have said about this so-called film and asking for it to be removed, it's still been nominated for an Oscar even though over 90,000 people have signed a petition, which has now been ignored, just like my feelings, by the Academy."
The President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, was among those to congratulate the team behind the film after the nominations were announced overnight.
The film recreates the moments before and after the murder and is based on transcripts of the police interviews with Venables and Thompson.
The case shocked the UK at the time, prompting discussion about whether the boys were "evil" and what kind of punishment they should be handed. The pair was eventually jailed for eight years, after which they were placed on lifelong parole.
In a director's statement, Lambe said the film was intended to show Thompson and Venables "not as 'monsters', but exactly as they were — two 10-year-old boys who have committed a horrendous crime and they don't know why".
However, after Ms Fergus spoke out against the film, accusing the director of making it for his own financial and professional benefit, Lambe apologised.
"I have enormous sympathy for the Bulger family and I am extremely sorry for any upset the film may have caused them," he told the BBC.
"With hindsight, I am sorry I didn't make Mrs Fergus aware of the film."
