Kirill Kudryavtsev, an AFP photographer based in Moscow, won an Excellence Award in the “Space on Earth” category for his photo of a women walking under snowfall in front of a Soyuz rocket installed as a monument in Baikonur city, near the Russian leased Kazakh Baikonur cosmodrome on December 05, 2021.

Brendan Smialowski won “Photographer of the Year” and “Political Photo of the Year” in the Top Honors category. He won the political photo prize for this image of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, US President Joe Biden, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov before a meeting in Geneva on 16 June 2021.

Daniel Leal arrived in Kyiv on the eve of the outbreak of the war. In this video edition of The Making-Of, Leal describes how he witnessed Ukraine’s capital transform overnight from a lively buzzing big city that reminded him of London, to a place of despair and shock.

Watch the complete episode here.

Kohsar was awarded the “Varenne National award for an international topic” for his emblematic picture showing a US soldier pointing his gun toward an Afghan passenger at the Kabul airport in Kabul on August 16, 2021, as thousands of people mobbed the city's airport trying to flee the Taliban rule.

Belgrade-based photographer Andrej Isakovic won the first prize in the “Single Sports” category for his image of the moment when Mercedes’ British driver Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull’s Dutch driver Max Verstappen collided during the Italian Formula One Grand Prix at the Autodromo Nazionale circuit in Monza, September 12, 2021.

The sands of society are shifting on an almost daily basis, the ‘traditional’ French way of life appears to be on the way out. Things that used to define France appear to have gone: the welfare state is losing steam, industry and agriculture are both suffering. The far-right claims that the country isn’t French enough and has become too multicultural. Even debating the place of Islam has become a dangerous no-go zone. France, it seems, is going through “a crise d’identité” -- an identity crisis.

Starting April 28 and until July 31, 2022, these carefully selected AFP photos will be on display at three Alliance Française Hong Kong centers (Wan Chai, Jordan, and Shatin) and online at the artplacer virtual gallery.

At a time when the need for mutual understanding in Europe has never been so great, a pioneering digital news service – “A European Perspective” – is stepping up its efforts to offer citizens multilingual coverage of major stories by drawing on content produced by 12 public service newsrooms.