The Silence of the Lambs (film)
1991 film directed by Jonathan Demme
The Silence of the Lambs is a 1991 American psychological horror thriller film directed by Jonathan Demme and written by Ted Tally, adapted from Thomas Harris's 1988 novel. It stars Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee who is hunting a serial killer known as "Buffalo Bill" (Ted Levine), who skins his female victims. To catch him, she seeks the advice of the imprisoned Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial murderer. The film also features performances by Scott Glenn, Anthony Heald, and Kasi Lemmons.
Released by Orion Pictures on February 14, 1991, the film grossed $272.7 million worldwide on a $19 million budget and became the fifth-highest-grossing film of the year. It premiered at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival, where Demme won the Silver Bear for Best Director. At the 64th Academy Awards, it became the third—and most recent—film to win the "Big Five" categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It remains the only horror film to have won Best Picture.
The Silence of the Lambs is regularly cited by critics, film directors, and audiences as one of the greatest and most influential films. In 2018, Empire ranked it 48th on its list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.
The public source identifies “The Silence of the Lambs (film)” as 1991 film directed by Jonathan Demme. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Silence, Lambs and film.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q133654. VIAF identifies the subject as 215347338. The Library of Congress control number is n93121265. 6 of 8 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1991, 1988 and 2018.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Silence of the Lambs (film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.