Paris (AFP)

The 81st Albert Londres Prize, the most prestigious prize for French-language journalism, was presented on Tuesday to Benoît Vitkine, correspondent of the newspaper Le Monde in Russia, for a series of reports in the countries of the former USSR.

"The elegance of his pen, the originality of his angles and the rigor of his work designate him today as a worthy heir to Albert London.The painful return of the Donbass veterans in Ukraine, Odessa gangster town, the Russian grip on the Sea of ​​Azov, the totalitarian instrumentalisation of football by Kadyrov the Chechen ... The most rough and complex subjects are told with exemplary clarity ", greets the association in a statement announcing the distinction of the journalist of 36 years.

He succeeds another journalist from the world, Elise Vincent, laureate for reports on jihadism and radicalization in France.

In the audiovisual category, which was the 35th edition, the 41-year-old journalist Marlène Rabaud was awarded for the film "Congo Lucha", which tells the story of a group of young Congolese engaged in a peaceful struggle to change their country, remove President Kabila and hold free elections.

This film, already distinguished at Figra (festival of the big report and the documentary of society), was diffused on the RTBF and the BBC and will be soon on France 2.x

"A brave film, warm and rare, a camera held at a man's height, a fair and sober tone, a thousand miles away from all formatting.Africa is there, in front of us, which throbs, rebels, dreams, and is fighting with a magnificent utopia against a political system that exploits and gangrene.We come out of this movie at once admiring, revolted ... and upset, "enthuses the association.

Finally, the Book Prize, the most recently created which is in its third edition, is the 39 year old journalist Feurat Alani, for "The Perfume of Iraq" (Editions Nova and Arte editions), "a true literary UFO : a graphic novel composed of a thousand tweets, which, similar to haikus, tell the different journeys in Iraq of a small French of Iraqi origin later became a journalist, responsible for covering the war in his second country that he began to love.

- Bold writing -

The testimony of this French journalist of Iraqi origin was initially published on Twitter before being adapted in graphic novel and also declined in animated web series on Arte.

"It shows that the price is open to all sorts of writings, at first glance we could have said that it really was not the writing Albert London, but we get into it, we forget that they are tweets, is another way of telling, a sensitive, poetic and condensed form of writing ", explains to AFP Annick Cojean, president of the jury.

"We like to notice the bold writings, we are saddened every year by the formatting attempts imposed by the television channels and sometimes by the newspapers, the ones we notice are the ones that take a step aside," he says. she.

The award ceremony was held at the Pompidou Center in Paris.

Created in 1933 as a tribute to the French journalist Albert Londres (1884-1932), father of the great modern reportage, the prize is endowed with 3,000 euros for each of the laureates, who must be under 41 years old. The jury of the prize is composed of about twenty former laureates.

"This is not the culmination of a career as a journalist but an encouragement to continue, we try to detect excellence, to discover personalities who display very clearly the values ​​of Albert London: integrity, rigor, courage, accuracy , sense of the news and ethics Ethics, and not daring and frenzied search of + coup + Ethics, it is hoped that our young laureates will respect all along their future career, "says Annick Cojean.

Values ​​even more important that the time is tormented for all media, she notes.

© 2019 AFP