WATCH: Amy Winehouse sings at 14

A haunting clip of a 14-year-old Amy Winehouse serenading her friend with an impressive rendition of “Happy Birthday” was released ahead of the theatrical release of an acclaimed new documentary tracking the swift demise of the late Jewish vocalist.

Depicting Winehouse whimsically playing around with a group of close friends at a birthday party for Lauren Gilbert, the scene serves as a tragic introduction to the new film “Amy,” which premiered at the Cannes film festival earlier this month, garnering rave reviews.

The film uses intimate home-video footage to chart the British jazz sensation from her teenage years to her tragic death from alcohol poisoning in 2011 at age 27.

“A lot of people said, ‘Why do you want to make a film about a junkie?'” Asif Kapadia, the film’s director, told a small group of journalists earlier this month.

“That’s exactly why I needed to make the film, because — what a horrible thing to say about a kid. This person was being dismissed and there was so much more going on.”

“Amy” triggered controversy in the run-up to Cannes, with her father Mitch Winehouse complaining that it depicts him as “money grabbing” and “attention seeking”.

On Wednesday, a record label executive said he had destroyed all of the singer’s demos so they would never be released in the future.

“It was a moral thing,” Universal Music UK chief executive David Joseph, who also served as the new film’s executive producer, told Billboard magazine.

“Taking a stem or a vocal is not something that would ever happen on my watch. It now can’t happen on anyone else’s.”

AFP contributed to this report.