-This is a guest post by Brett Zongker and Deb Fiscella, both with the media relations team in the Office of Communications.
The 2025 National Film Registry is out today, showcasing a group of 25 films spanning 118 years and including fan favorites such as “The Thing,” “Clueless,” “The Big Chill” and “The Incredibles.”
The Library’s annual addition to the list of films to be preserved for their cinematic and cultural heritage starts with the 1896 silent film, “The Tramp and the Dog,” and stretches to the 2014 Wes Anderson picture, “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”
Also included are modern documentaries, such as Ken Burns’ Oscar-nominated “The Brooklyn Bridge,” and Nancy Buirski’s “The Loving Story,” along with a couple of musicals from Hollywood’s Golden Age, “High Society” and “White Christmas.”
“When we preserve films, we preserve American culture for generations to come,” said Acting Librarian of Congress Robert R. Newlen. “These selections for the National Film Registry show us that films are instrumental in capturing important parts of our nation’s story.”
There are also several highly acclaimed modern dramas, including Edward Zwick’s Civil War epic, “Glory,” and Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise.” Jonathan Demme’s “Philadelphia,” one of the first mainstream films to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic, made the list, as did Salma Hayek’s “Frida,” a riveting study of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.
Anderson used the Library’s extensive collection of Photochrom prints from early 19th-century Europe to help him recreate the architecture and design of “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”
“We made our own versions of things, but much of what is in our film comes directly from that collection from the Library of Congress,” Anderson said in an interview.
This year’s list, compiled as always by the National Film Preservation Board with final selections made by the Librarian, includes half a dozen silent films from the era that followed the Lumière brothers’ invention of motion pictures in 1895.
Jacqueline Stewart, who as chair of the NFPB leads the selection process, noted these films were of historical merit because they showed “the range of topics and styles in the earliest years of American filmmaking.” She’ll host a March 19 special on Turner Classic Movies to introduce and show several of this year’s films.
This year’s top vote-getter from the public was “The Thing,” the 1982 horror classic from director John Carpenter. Fans nominated 7,559 titles for consideration this year, and you can cast your vote (until Aug. 15) for next year’s registry.
Congress established the NFPB in 1988. Since then, 925 films have been placed on the registry, including home movies, news reels, student films, documentaries, art-house favorites and pop culture hits.
One of the last category, 1984’s “The Karate Kid,” launched a series of sequels and television shows that continued to the present day. Lead actor Ralph Macchio said the characters were the key to cementing the original film’s impact.
“The magic of Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi and me as the Daniel LaRusso character, that sort of give and take, that instant soulful magic, was happening from our first meeting,” Macchio told the Library. “For me, the heart and soul of the film is in those two characters.”
Writer and director Amy Heckerling recalled how she made “Clueless,” the 1995 teen comedy that included that decade’s iconic “As if!” line. The movie has been called a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s 1815 novel “Emma,” but Heckerling told the Library that the film’s origins weren’t quite that simple.
“I would get up, read the news and then just want to cry and be depressed,” she said. “So I thought, ‘What if you really were always positive? How would that be? And what if you were doing things and you just knew that you were right?’ ”
That reminded her of the headstrong title character in Austen’s novel, which she had first read in college. She re-read it and was delighted to see her ultra-confident character in the pages: “It was like Jane Austen was pulling up from the grave and saying, ‘I already got it!’ ”
Here’s the complete list of the 2025 National Film Registry, in chronological order.
- The Tramp and the Dog (1896)
- The Oath of the Sword (1914)
- The Maid of McMillan (1916)
- The Lady (1925)
- Sparrows (1926)
- Ten Nights in a Barroom (1926)
- White Christmas (1954)
- High Society (1956)
- Brooklyn Bridge (1981)
- Say Amen, Somebody (1982)
- The Thing (1982)
- The Big Chill (1983)
- The Karate Kid (1984)
- Glory (1989)
- Philadelphia (1993)
- Before Sunrise (1995)
- Clueless (1995)
- The Truman Show (1998)
- Frida (2002)
- The Hours (2002)
- The Incredibles (2004)
- The Wrecking Crew (2008)
- Inception (2010)
- The Loving Story (2011)
- The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
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