From ‘The Big Chill’ to ‘Inception,’ here are the 25 films added to the National Film Registry this year

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — While President Donald Trump is pushing Americans to see his wife’s documentary “Melania” which premieres this week, the Library of Congress is reminding us that the country’s cinematic history is vast and well worth celebrating.

The body on Thursday released its annual list of films added to the National Film Registry “due to their cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to preserve the nation’s film heritage.”

The Library named 25 films in total, dating from 1896 to 2014. The list includes classics from the ’80s and ’90’s, including “The Big Chill,” “The Karate Kid,” “Philadelphia” and “Before Sunrise,” as well as newer fare like “Inception” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”

No one tell the president that the 1992 comedy “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,” in which he famously makes a cameo, did not make the cut.

The Library of Congress National Film Registry was established by Congress when the National Film Preservation Act was passed in 1988. The selections for 2025 bring the number of titles in the registry to 925.

Wes Anderson, who directed “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” said the Library of Congress inspired his film’s visual style.

“When we were first starting to try to figure out, how do we tell this story… the architecture and the landscapes… they don’t exist anymore,” Anderson said in a statement to NPR. “We just went through the entire photocrom collection, which is a lot of images. And …we made our own versions of things, but much of what is in our film comes directly – with our little twist on it – from that collection, from the library, the Library of Congress.”

Trump has targeted the Library of Congress in his desire to overhaul the government.

In May 2025, he fired the long-serving Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, who still had about a year and a half left in her 10-year term.

Later that year, the Supreme Court stopped Trump, at least temporarily, from replacing a top official at the Library of Congress, Shira Perlmutter, the director of the US Copyright Office.

The films added by the Library of Congress to the National Film Registry for 2025 are:

· 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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