Angelina Jolie has slammed a report that her upcoming film First They Killed My Father utilized a controversial child-casting process, calling it “false and upsetting.”

Jolie has defended herself against allegations that she used psychological tricks on underprivileged Cambodian children to judge who could play a convincing robber the best.

The casting game, according to Jolie, was a moment in the film that has been written about as if it were true.

The profoundly absorbing Cambodian genocide drama “First They Killed My Father,” Jolie’s most recent film, is a kind of synthesis of Jolie’s multifaceted existence. Her first encounter with Cambodia was in 2000, when she landed in the country to film “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.” She fell in love with the nation and its people and began doing volunteer work for the United Nations’ refugee organization, as well as adopting her first child, Maddox, from Cambodia.

The anecdote was included in a Vanity Fair article on Jolie. It detailed the audition process for the Netflix original film, which is based on author Loung Ung’s book of life in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge government. Casting directors developed a “game” to help pick a kid to play the lead role, according to the story, in which they offered money to a child who had experienced adversity, “asked the child to think of something she needed the money for,” and then took it away.

The exercise led them to their starring actress, Srey Moch, who was “overwhelmed with emotion” when she returned the money, which she had intended to spend on a funeral for her grandpa, Jolie told the magazine.

She stated that she was searching for a child who had gone through a lot to play the young Loung Ung in First They Killed My Father.

The film “First They Killed My Father,” based on Loung Ung’s 2000 book, will be released on Netflix and in select cinemas on Friday. Ung’s perspective as a five-year-old girl living with her family in Phnom Penn when the Khmer Rouge march in, force the people to escape, and jail Ung’s family in a work camp, violently indoctrinating them to a classless society, is depicted in the film. During the Khmer Rouge’s four-year reign of terror, almost two million people perished.

Speaking to Variety she said: “Srey Moch [the girl ultimately chosen for the part] was the only child that stared at the money for a very, very long time.

“When she was forced to give it back, she became overwhelmed with emotion. All these different things came flooding back.”

Jolie is quoted as saying that the girl who eventually won the part became “overwhelmed with emotion” when the money was taken away from her. “When she was asked later what the money was for, she said her grandfather had died, and they didn’t have enough money for a nice funeral,” she said which sparked outrage online, with some accusing Jolie of exploitation.

The incident, according to Guardian author Marina Hyde, proves Jolie is “clearly bats—t” and one of many “Hollywood crazies” who exploit poverty for their own gain.

Jolie, on the other hand, has said that her remarks were misunderstood and that accusations that she stole the money from the kids were “false and upsetting.”

The film isn’t only a heartbreaking look at war through the eyes of a youngster; it’s also a cathartic healing for Cambodia and a personal trip into Maddox’s countrymen’s history. The 16-year-old was listed as an executive producer on the film, which was shot in Cambodia with both professional and non-professional local performers.

“I said to my son Maddox, who’s known Loung his whole life, when you’re ready, we should tell Luong’s story. But we have to tell it together,” Jolie says. “We had this script for a few years and he came up to me and said, ‘I’m ready.’”

She told HuffPost in a statement:

“Every measure was taken to ensure the safety, comfort and wellbeing of the children on the film starting from the auditions through production to the present,” Angelina Jolie said in a joint statement made with one of the film’s producers, Rithy Panh, to the Huffington Post. “Parents, guardians, partner NGOs whose job it is to care for children and medical doctors were always on hand every day, to ensure everyone had all they needed. And above all, to make sure that no one was in any way hurt by participating in the re-creation of such a painful part of their country’s history.

“I am upset that a pretend exercise in an improvisation, from an actual scene in the film, has been written about as if it was a real scenario. The suggestion that real money was taken from a child during an audition is false and upsetting. I would be outraged myself if this had happened. The point of this film is to bring attention to the horrors children face in war, and to help fight to protect them,” she added.

She was accused of playing “orphan Hunger Games” by a journalist for the NPR radio network in the United States.