Although a somewhat unpopular category at the Academy Awards, the race for Best Documentary Feature is underway. The frontrunner appears to be the Roger Ebert documentary "Life Itself," with "Keep On, Keepin On" close behind. It's a typically hard category to predict, and with the amount of documentaries still to come, this early prediction could quickly change.

Steve James, the director of "Life Itself" spoke to Collider about his process for making the documentary: "So, when it came time to do the film, I wanted to lean on the memoir, for a number of reasons. I loved the structure of it. I loved the way it looked at his past through the prism of his present life, since the surgeries and since the loss of his ability to speak and eat." Based on the rave reviews that "Life Itself" received, it would appear that critics also liked the structure that came about because of Roger Ebert's memoire.

So much so that the film is now being called the frontrunner for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar category. According to Indiewire, "Roger Ebert doc ‘Life Itself' (directed by the many times snubbed Steve James) seems like it could be not only the populist choice but the sentimental one."

Right behind "Life Itself" is "Keep On, Keepin On," a documentary about the mentorship between jazz legend Clark Terry and blind piano prodigy Justin Kauflin. The film has gotten rave reviews, a few awards, and it's director Alan Hicks just won the Best New Documentary Director award at the Tribeca Film Festival, so perhaps another film about music (like last year's "20 Feet From Stardom") will clinch the Academy Award for Best Documentary.

There's still three months of film releases to go before the final Oscar submission cutoff date, but since the entire Academy will receive screeners of all the official selections for Best Documentary, "Life Itself" may have some competition on its hands.