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While many eyes are locked on the Best Picture race this year, as The King’s Speech squares up to The Social Network, the Best Documentary category has been gathering an unprecedented level of interest. It’s particularly revealing of the strength of 2010’s documentaries that with only five slots to fill, many critical and commercial hits had to be excluded; Waiting for Superman, The Tillman Story, This Way of Life and from former Oscar winner Alex Gibney, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer. Each of the five films nominated this year brings something unique to the category, so predicting a winner would be best left to the bookies - but let’s try anyway.

Inside Job
A former nominee for directing No End in Sight in 2008, Charles H. Ferguson brings the full force of his MIT education to this expose of the global financial crisis. Featuring an impressive cast of interviewees, including politicians, journalists and financial insiders, Matt Damon’s narration has inevitably been the focus of many reviews. As winner of the Best Documentary prize at the Director’s Guild of America Awards, and with Oscar-magnet distributor Sony Pictures Classics throwing their weight behind it, the smart money is on Inside Job.

Exit Through the Gift Shop
Easily the most widely seen of the nominees, the film début of the controversial and unpredictable graffiti artist Banksy is looking like an unlikely winner given his reputation for anti-corporate stunts. Academy president Tom Sherak has already drafted a contingency plan in the event that Exit wins the prize, while Banksy was notably absent from a recent panel of Oscar nominees. However, a bid to recover falling ratings might prompt the Academy voters to stir up some trouble.

Waste Land
Another unconventional art documentary, Lucy Walker’s Waste Land points a camera at the work of Brazilian trash pickers and their unique collaboration with the sculptor Vik Muniz. While the film won prizes at both Sundance and the Berlin International Film Festival this time last year, it’s still an outside choice. Could the film regain momentum and grab enough votes to win?

Gasland
A controversial choice of documentary, illuminating the practice of ‘fracking’ - in which energy companies use hydraulic technology to force gas reserves from out of the ground. Gasland director Josh Fox followed families from Texas to Wyoming to see how fracking had damaged their local environment. Of course, the film has been attacked by corporations and lobbying groups including Energy in Depth, who issued a seven-page rebuttal of the film’s assertions to Academy voters (a counter-rebuttal, by Gasland’s distributor Fox, quickly followed). It’s a frontrunner for sure, but far from the favourite.

Restrepo
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance festival last year, the chances of an Oscar for Restrepo have been buoyed by ecstatic reviews, a renewed anti-war sentiment in the USA and unprecedented success via DVD and video-on-demand releases. Restrepo follows an American platoon stationed in Afghanistan, defending an army outpost against the Taliban. Restrepo will likely rival Inside Job for the most votes from Academy members.

A combination of topicality, momentum from other awards ceremonies, critical success and the marketing efforts of their distributors are all crucial elements in a winning film’s campaign for Oscar gold. The Best Documentary prizewinner is incredibly hard to place this year, but we’d have to put our hypothetical money on Inside Job - for relevance, star power and sheer quality. What do you think?