In 2003 Italy, Attilio de Giovanni, a comical and impassioned poetry professor and the divorced father of two teenage girls, is hopelessly in love with Vittoria, a coworker and writer.

Vittoria goes to Iraq to write the biography of the poet Fuad, Attilio's close friend, who is returning to his country after 18 years living in France.

Attilio locates scuba gear to provide Vittoria with oxygen and a flyswatter, which he jokingly calls the "weapon of mass destruction" the US is looking for in Iraq.

Vittoria, driving her car, stops to see an escaped tiger in the middle of the road under falling ashes from the fire on the vicinity that resembles snowfall.

The website's critics consensus reads: "The Tiger and the Snow proves Roberto Benigni's antics are bizarrely ill-suited for a film seeking to strike the unwieldy balance between romance, comedy, and wartime drama.

[7] Deborah Young of Variety wrote: "Like an Iraq-war mirror image of Life Is Beautiful, actor-director Roberto Benigni's The Tiger and the Snow re-runs the successful structure and comic persona of the 1998 Oscar-winning film in a trippy fantasia about a poet who follows his love to hell and, in this happier ending, back.