WASHINGTON, DC.- Twenty-five films have been selected for the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2024 due to their cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to preserve the nation’s film heritage, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced today.

The new selections date back nearly 130 years and include a diverse group of films, filmmakers and Hollywood landmarks. The selections span from a silent film created to entice audiences at the dawn of cinema in 1895 to the newest selected film from 2010, a drama about social media.


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Popular Hollywood releases selected this year include the first Star Trek film added to the registry with “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” from 1982, as well as Eddie Murphy’s first feature film on the registry, “Beverly Hills Cop.”

The public submitted nominations of more than 6,700 titles for consideration this year. Several selected titles this year received strong public support, including: “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” “No Country for Old Men,” “The Social Network,” and “Dirty Dancing.”

The selections bring the number of titles in the registry to 900. Some films are among the 2 million moving image collection items held in the Library of Congress. Others are preserved in coordination with copyright holders or other film archives.

“Films reflect our nation’s history and culture and must be preserved in our national library for generations to come. We’re honored by the responsibility to add 25 diverse new films to the National Film Registry each year as we work to preserve our cultural heritage,” said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. “This is a collective effort in the film community to preserve our cinematic heritage, and we are grateful to our partners, including the National Film Preservation Board.”

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will host a television special Wednesday, Dec. 18, starting at 8 p.m. ET to screen a selection of films named to the registry this year. Hayden will join TCM host and film historian Jacqueline Stewart, who is chair of the National Film Preservation Board, to discuss the films.

Stewart led the board in studying and recommending films across a variety of genres and eras to be considered for the registry.

“The National Film Registry now includes 900 titles, and what's remarkable to me is that every year when the board talks about films and their significance, we find new titles to consider. The wealth of American film history is sometimes rather overwhelming, and people often wonder: how do you recommend this film or that film?” Stewart said. “It's through a lot of research, conversation and discussion, and it's through a commitment to showing the true diversity of filmmaking. I'm thrilled that we recognize student films and independent films, animation, documentary and experimental works, as well as feature length narrative drama, comedy, horror and science fiction on the registry this year.”

Films Selected for the 2024 National Film Registry
(chronological order)

• Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895)
• KoKo’s Earth Control (1928)
• Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
• Pride of the Yankees (1942)
• Invaders from Mars (1953)
• The Miracle Worker (1962)
• The Chelsea Girls (1966)
• Ganja and Hess (1973)
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
• Uptown Saturday Night (1974)
• Zora Lathan Student Films (1975-76)
• Up in Smoke (1978)
• Will (1981)
• Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan (1982)
• Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
• Dirty Dancing (1987)
• Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989)
• Powwow Highway (1989)
• My Own Private Idaho (1991)
• American Me (1992)
• Mi Familia (1995)
• Compensation (1999)
• Spy Kids (2001)
• No Country for Old Men (2007)
• The Social Network (2010)

Public Nominations for the National Film Registry

The public submitted 6,744 titles for consideration this year. The public can submit nominations throughout the year on the Library’s web site. Nominations for next year will be accepted until Aug. 15, 2025. Cast your vote at loc.gov/film.

Aaron Sorkin Recalls ‘The Social Network’

In an interview with the Library of Congress, Aaron Sorkin recalled the making of “The Social Network” about the origins of Facebook and his collaboration with director David Fincher. Sorkin wrote the screenplay with his trademark rapid-fire dialogue based on the 2009 book “The Accidental Billionaires” by Ben Mezrich.

“It felt like a good courtroom drama to me. I didn’t know it was going to be a lot more than that at the time,” Sorkin said. He compares the work of crafting dialogue for the screen to making music.

“Anytime speech is used for the sake of performance, it has all of the same qualities and rules that music does. It is music. It has tone and pitch and rhythm,” Sorkin said. “So what a line sounds like is as important to me as what it means.”

In the case of “The Social Network,” Sorkin recalled that during an early planning session, Fincher asked Sorkin to read the entire screenplay aloud at the pace that Sorkin heard it in his head when he was writing the script.

“Typically a screenplay is about 110, 120 pages. Mine are a lot longer because there’s a lot of dialogue without a lot of action,” Sorkin said. “David (Fincher) was trying to convince the studio that this 172-page screenplay is going to be a two-hour movie. So he had me. He sat there with a stopwatch, and he wrote down the time of each scene. And when we started rehearsal, you know, we were rehearsing the first scene. He was rehearsing with Jesse (Eisenberg) and Rooney (Mara) at a table … and he'd say, ‘and by the way, this scene needs to be seven minutes and 20 seconds, and you're playing it at seven minutes and 50 seconds, so speed it up.’ The movie ended up being an hour, 59 minutes.”

Films Reflecting Hispanic Artists and Culture

Five films selected this year include prominent Hispanic artists or themes, including “American Me,” “Mi Familia,” “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” “Spy Kids” and “Up in Smoke.”

Two films this year feature the work of Edward James Olmos: “Mi Familia” and “American Me.” This brings Olmos to eight films on the registry as an actor. “American Me” is his first appearance as a director in the registry.

With this year’s addition of “Mi Familia,” director Gregory Nava now has three renowned explorations of the Hispanic experience on the National Film Registry. “Mi Familia” joins previous selections “El Norte” and “Selena.”

Two films this year also feature Cheech Marin: “Up in Smoke” and “Spy Kids.” These are Marin’s first films on the registry. “Up in Smoke” is also the first Cheech & Chong film on the registry.

In an interview with the Library of Congress, Marin recalled making the Cheech & Chong comedies. “The level of improv that we brought to those movies is what gave it a spontaneity,” Marin said. “And that's why people thought they were happening for the first time. Because in many instances, it was happening for the first time.”

The film “Spy Kids” stars Antonio Banderas as Gregorio Cortez. The name is a nod to Hispanic heritage and the famous Gregorio Cortez. The movie “The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez” was added to the National Film Registry in 2022. “Spy Kids” is Antonio Banderas’s first film on the registry.

Two films selected this year were produced by Lou Adler: “American Me” and “Up in Smoke.” Adler has several other films on the registry including “Monterey Pop,” “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and an appearance in “20 Feet From Stardom.”

One of the selections with strong public nominations this year, “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” features Mexican-American actor Ricardo Montalbán as the main antagonist in the film.

A Nation’s Diverse History on Screen

This 2024 selections include diversity among filmmakers and in the stories depicted on screen as reflections of society.

Several films this year were made by Black directors, including: “Compensation,” “Ganja and Hess,” “Uptown Saturday Night,” “Will,” and “Zora Lathan Student Films.” The film “Will” is widely considered to be the first independent feature-length film directed by a Black woman, Jessie Maple, a trailblazing cinematographer and director.

An Academy Award-winning documentary selected this year tells the story of the National AIDS Memorial Quilt, “Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt,” and an important period in LGBTQ history. The Library also holds the newly digitized archival records of the National AIDS Memorial Quilt, representing the lives of those who died of AIDS since 1981.

Deaf characters and culture are represented in two films this year: “The Miracle Worker” from 1962 and “Compensation” from 1999. In “The Miracle Worker,” Arthur Penn shows the Helen Keller story in a direct and unsentimental manner unusual for its time. The film won two Academy Awards, including Best Actress for Anne Bancroft and Best Supporting Actress for Patty Duke, who was 16 and the youngest person to win an Oscar at the time.

One of the most striking aspects of “Compensation” is its unusual narrative approach. Upon casting deaf actress Michelle A. Banks, director Zeinabu irene Davis and screenwriter Mark Arthur Chéry modified the film to incorporate sign language and title cards, making it accessible to both deaf and hearing audiences. The film’s relative silence and use of ornate title cards also function as an homage to Black filmmakers of the silent era, to which Davis nods when she sends the characters to the movies to see William Foster’s “The Railroad Porter” (1913), thought to be the first fiction film by a Black filmmaker.

“My favorite scene in the film is the recreation of a lost film,” Davis told the Library of that connection in “Compensation.” “The only reason why I was able to recreate this film was because there was a synopsis of it in the Chicago Defender.”

The selection “Powwow Highway” from 1989 stands out as one of the first indie classics to treat Native Americans as ordinary people, navigating the complexities of everyday life, departing from long-perpetuated stereotypes. The film was based on the novel of the same name by David Seals.


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