Added to the National Film Registry in 2019.

Luis Valdez’s (La Bamba) searing adaptation of his acclaimed stage play blends shocking history with cinematic fiction for this tale of the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial that led to the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943. Barrio leader Henry Reyna (Daniel Valdez, who wrote the film’s score) and others from the Mexican American and Latinx communities are wrongfully imprisoned, and their activist counsel fights to shine a light on the discriminatory nature of the charges. Featuring Edward James Olmos (Stand and Deliver), Zoot Suit is a scorching indictment of the criminal justice system and the racially motivated arrests that proliferated in the Latinx community in the 1940s.