Denise Fergus has urged a filmmaker to pull his Oscar-nominated movie about her son's brutal death, saying she is "reliving the nightmare" all over again.

Speaking on This Morning the devastated mum says hearing about the film, Detainment, was “heart rendering” and says no one contacted her about it before it was made.

Irish filmmaker Vincent Lambe created the film based on interviews with the two-year-old’s schoolboy killers Jon Venables and Robert Thompson from police tapes.

At the age of 10 the pair killed toddler James after abducting him from a shopping centre in Merseyside in February 1993.

(Image: ITV)

"It's just reliving the nightmare," Denise told Holly and Phil.

“I try to put it behind me and I try to do my best to be James' voice but to be hit with something like this puts me right back down."

“To see that still of James being led to his death by them two, and then to see it again by actors, it’s heart rendering.”

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A petition to pull the movie off the Academy Award shortlist has since gathered more than 100,000 signatures.

Denise also called for a regulation to be put in place where filmmakers should be made to contact bereaved relatives of victims before they make a movie about a family tragedy.

"I think that something should be put in place so that the family of a victim should be contacted before it goes ahead," she said.

(Image: ITV)

Meanwhile Stuart said that, unlike Denise, he had watched the film and that it had made him "physically sick".

Denise says she refuses to watch the film, but her husband Stuart describes it as “horrifying”.

He said: "The scenes that they had to reenact was horrifying.

"They try to humanise Venables and it feels so wrong."

(Image: Publicity Picture)

Short film 'Detainment' features Leon Hughes as Robert Thompson and Ely Solan as Jon Venables.

In a statement, filmmaker Lambe said: "I have enormous sympathy for the Bulger family and I am extremely sorry for any upset the film may have caused them.

"With hindsight, I am sorry I didn't make Mrs Fergus aware of the film."

He added: "The film was not made for financial gain and nobody involved in the making of the film intends to profit from it."