Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel and Ken Burns’ Brooklyn Bridge are among 25 films selected by The Library of Congress for the National Film Registry.
The selections date back to the silent film era, with six silent films dating from 1896 to 1926, to the newest film, Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” from 2014.
Other films selected for the registry for 2025 include “The Karate Kid,” “Glory,” “Philadelphia,” “Inception,” “Before Sunrise,” “The Truman Show,” “Frida,” and the teen comedy “Clueless.”
Classic Hollywood selections include the 1954 musical “White Christmas” and the musical “High Society” from 1956, featuring Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, and Grace Kelly in her last movie.
Four documentaries were selected for the registry this year, including Ken Burns’ “Brooklyn Bridge,” Nancy Buirski’s “The Loving Story,” George Nierenberg’s “Say Amen, Somebody,” and Danny Tedesco’s “The Wrecking Crew.”
“The ‘Brooklyn Bridge’ film was my first film that had sort of widespread distribution. And I can’t think of a day where I didn’t learn something new. I felt in some ways like every first film is reinventing the wheel. You can be influenced by other people, but you really, in the end, have to do it. Everything was how you wake the story up, how you take a photograph. And in those days it was all analog. We were hand shooting all of the archives. That was a very long process, traveling to them in person. There was no digitization. There was no getting it over the internet. It was all firsthand. We filmed for the ‘Brooklyn Bridge’ at 163 different sources,” said Ken Burns.
Wes Anderson reflected on how he used the Library’s collections to create his film, saying, “There’s a specific set of postcards in the Library of Congress Photochrome Prints collection. They’re photographs from the turn of the century and hand-tinted. When we were first starting to figure out how to tell this story, the views and images that we were looking for, the architecture and the landscapes that we wanted, they don’t exist anymore,” Anderson said.
He added, “We went through the entire Photochrome collection, which is a lot of images. 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.”
“When we preserve films, we preserve American culture for generations to come. These selections for the National Film Registry show us that films are instrumental in capturing important parts of our nation’s story,” said Acting Librarian of Congress Robert R. Newlen. “We are proud to continue this important work, adding a broad range of 25 films to the National Film Registry as a collective effort in the film community to protect our cinematic heritage.”
The selections for 2025 bring the number of titles in the registry to 925.
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will host a television special on Thursday, March 19, starting at 8 p.m. ET to screen a selection of films named to the registry this year. TCM host and film historian Jacqueline Stewart, who is chair of the National Film Preservation Board, will introduce the films.
“It is very meaningful that the National Film Registry is adding six silent film titles, showing the range of topics and styles in the earliest years of American filmmaking,” Stewart said. “And it is especially exciting to see that the top title nominated by the public for this year, ‘The Thing,’ has been added to the National Film Registry, along with ‘The Truman Show’ and ‘The Incredibles, ’ which also had very strong public support.”
Films Selected for the 2025 National Film Registry
(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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