And not to be shown in cinemas
The parents of a 2-year-old boy who was tortured and murdered by two boys in 1993 in Liverpool have demanded that he be removed from the Oscar nomination list and that a short film based on this story be shown in cinemas.
In 1993, John Venables and Robert Thompson, then 10, abducted, tortured and killed little James Balzer. The infant was found dead two days later near a railway line. This case has caused disgust not only in Britain but all over the world.
Irish director Vincent Lamp made the short film Detainment, a 3-minute film, which is presented as "a true story based on the recording of testimonies (to the police) and recorded documents".
James's parents, Denise Ferguson and Ralph Balzer, are urging the director to withdraw his film from the Oscar nominations and not promote it in cinemas. "It's one thing to make a movie without contacting or asking permission from James's family, it's quite another to show the last hours of James's life before he was brutally murdered and forcing me and my family to relive it." wrote on Twitter the mother of the child, stating "Very angry and troubled".
The call for the film to be withdrawn from the Oscar nominees had gathered more than 112.000 signatures on the internet this morning.
The boys who killed James Balzer were released in 2001 and changed their names to avoid retaliation. In February 2018, John Venables was sentenced to three years and four months in prison for possession of child pornography. This was his second conviction for the same charge, since in 2010 he was found guilty and then he was sentenced to two years in prison.