Scott Feinberg is the awards guru at The Hollywood Reporter, writing the “Feinberg Forecast” and hosting “Awards Chatter.” He’s made countless amazing predictions during his career and is gearing up for yet another awards season. Feinberg has traveled to Savannah, Georgia for the Savannah Film Festival three years in a row and that’s where I caught up with him.

This year, Feinberg was instrumental in adding a new section to the festival, which is presented by the Savannah College of Art and Design. The festival added the “Docs to Watch” section for the second year in a row to highlight documentaries that are expected to be in the awards discussion. Some of the films, like Asif Kapadia’s Amy, have been out for months, but the section serves as a reminder to industry insiders that these films shouldn’t be forgotten. Feinberg also hosts a panel of the films’ directors.

“That’s the section that I really helped [the festival organizers] curate because - the festival ultimately has the final say - but we consult on it because the ones that are shown in ‘Docs to Watch’ are also represented on the panel that I moderate,” Feinberg said. “I want them to basically only be awards caliber documentaries that they bring here because we’re going to have a conversation. So I think every one of them, plus Tab Hunter: Confidential, which we also did separately, I think every one of them could be [in the running for awards].”

The “Docs to Watch” segment also helps the Savannah festival (SAVFF) make itself stand out. The festival happens at the perfect time, just as the awards season is heating up. Other festivals have found their niche in that season, so SAVFF’s niche can be highlighting documentaries.

There are 124 documentaries eligible for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar this year, Feinberg noted, and no one is going to be able to watch all of those. “So for the filmmakers, if you get invited to a place like the Savannah Film Festival, with the video then going on The Hollywood Reporter website before the voting begins, it’s a nice way to make your film stand out,” he said.

SAVFF also hosted screenings of several main awards candidates, including Youth, Spotlight and Brooklyn. While Todd Haynes’ Carol didn’t play here, Feinberg makes it sound like Savannah audiences got a good taste of films that can win Oscars. Feinberg is particularly a fan of Spotlight, Tom McCarthy’s film about the Boston Globe reporters who investigated the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. He called the film a “very serious contender.”

“It’s sort of like All The President’s Men,” Feinberg said, later explaining that, “I think because it has such a big, likeable cast like Birdman or like Crash or like a lot of past winners, people want to check it out... People like a mystery and it unfolds, even though we know what happens basically, it’s still an edge of your seat [movie]. And the filmmaker, Tom McCarthy, is somebody who has never really been recognized by the Academy but everyone really respects him.”

All this talk about awards might make outside observers think that the Oscars take precedent over the actual art of filmmaking and that “Oscar bait” has made directors more interested in chasing awards than actually making a good movie. While Feinberg acknowledges that some movies are obviously engineered to win awards, he brought up a great point about why we should be happy they exist.

“If the Oscars didn’t exist, and all the other things that have now been created to capitalize on the Oscars didn’t exist - all the other awards shows and festivals and whatever - we would have, year round, what you have in February or March, which is just remakes, sequels, adaptations, nothing edgy or original,” Feinberg said. “It would be sad.”

“I’m thankful every day for the Oscars,” Feinberg later said. “Without them, we would have a very bleak movie landscape.”