MUMBAI: As the race for the best documentary feature Oscar is tough, many believe that it‘s a battle between two tales of animal abuse and threats to human health.

The films Robert Kenner‘s Food, Inc. and Louie Psihoyos‘ The Cove are exactly the kind of accessible, socially conscious filmmaking the Academy often endorses with the Oscar.

Magnolia Pictures, distributor of Food, has been toasting the film for voters at bicoastal parties. But the honours Cove received from the producers and directors guilds possibly position it for an Oscar win.

The other nominees include Judith Ehrlich‘s The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, Anders Ostergaard‘s Burma VJ and Rebecca Camissa‘s Which Way Home.