Fast food film Super Size Me is among 12 films which could compete for best documentary at next year's Oscars.
The film-maker put on 25lbs during his burger-and-fries diet
The documentary follows film-maker Morgan Spurlock as he eats only McDonald's fast food for a month.
Michael Moore, who won in 2002 for Bowling for Columbine, will submit his controversial documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 in the best picture category.
Channel 4-funded Touching the Void, about a disastrous mountain expedition, has also made it on to the shortlist.
Touching the Void, which won a Bafta award earlier this year, became the most successful documentary in UK cinema history.
It blends interviews and reconstruction to tell the story of two climbers fighting for their lives on the Peruvian Andes in 1985.
The 12 films were chosen by the academy's documentary branch, which also will select the final five nominees for the Academy Award ceremony on 27 February next year.
Touching the Void tells the story of climbers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates
Meanwhile, Born Into Brothels - which looks at the lives of children of Calcutta prostitutes and won the Sundance Festival audience award for favourite documentary last January - is also a contender for the award.
The other films in the running for the five documentary
Oscar nominations are Home of the Brave, Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, In the Realms of the Unreal and The Ritchie Boys.
A film about a crisis over a camel calf belonging to a family of Mongolian nomads in The Story of the Weeping also makes the list along with Mark Wexler's Tell Them Who You Are.
Twist of Faith, a film about a man confronting past sexual abuse by a priest, and the surfing chronicle
Riding Giants, were also chosen.