Which Best Picture winner features the cannibal psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter?

The Best Picture winner featuring the cannibal psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter is The Silence of the Lambs.

Jonathan Demme’s 1991 psychological horror thriller stars Anthony Hopkins as Lecter, an imprisoned psychiatrist and serial murderer. FBI trainee Clarice Starling, played by Jodie Foster, consults him while hunting Buffalo Bill, a killer who targets women and skins his victims.

The film adapts Thomas Harris’s 1988 novel and focuses as much on psychological manipulation as on the investigation. Lecter’s intelligence makes him useful to Starling, but every conversation is dangerous because he probes her memories and vulnerabilities.

A frequent mix-up is Hannibal, the 2001 sequel, which also features Lecter but was not a Best Picture winner. The Silence of the Lambs won Best Picture at the 64th Academy Awards and became only the third film to win the Oscars’ “Big Five”: Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Adapted Screenplay.