Music
09 Jan 19

James Bulger's mother asks Oscars to drop drama about child's killers

Bulger’s parents have argued that Detainment, a short film about the infamous 1993 case, is sympathetic to the toddler’s murderers, while its Irish director Vincent Lambe has defended the film.

The parents of James Bulger, the two-year-old boy murdered in Liverpool in 1993, have criticised the makers of a short film about the case, which has since been shortlisted for an Oscar nomination.

Detainment was written and directed by Irish film-maker Vincent Lambe and is based on transcripts of the police interrogation of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, who were 10 years old at the time and were subsequently convicted of the murder.

“Not once has the maker of this film contacted me or any of James’s family about this film," said Bulger's father Ralph, speaking with the Daily Mirror. "It has been 26 years since my son was taken and murdered and so I have seen many documentaries and news stories about him. But I have never been so cut up and offended by something that shows so little compassion to James and his family.

“I accept this is a murder of such magnitude it will always be written about and featured in the news but to make a film so sympathetic to James’s killers is devastating.”

In addition to this, James' mother Denise Fergus has called for the Oscars to remove the film from their shortlist.

Speaking on ITV's Loose Women, she said: “In my own personal opinion I think he’s just trying to big his career up. And to do that under someone else’s grief is just unbelievable and unbearable.”

Mr Lambe has acknowledged the comments of James' parents and apologised for any upset caused and for not consulting with the family. He explained his reasoning for not doing so in an interview interviews and in a lengthy post on social media.

“There’s more than one perspective on the case," he said, "and we wanted to make a film that was impartial and focuses solely on the factual material which has been public knowledge for 25 years.

“And we decided not to contact any of the family for that reason, because if you contact one family then there’s pressure to tell it from the way they want it to be told.

“Contacting the families doesn’t change what’s in this transcript but most likely it would change what would be in the film and then you’re suppressing information and you’re telling a version of the truth.”

You can read the full statement here.