Speakers

Leander Verdievel
Screenwriter at VRT , Belgium

Leander is the creator and screenwriter of Sense of Tumour. He started his career with the VRT, the Belgian public broadcasting corporation, and initially worked as an editor on several TV programmes. Screenwriting has always been his passion and in 2018 he created his first TV fiction series for the VRT. Sense of Tumour is a story about a brilliant young med student who is diagnosed with cancer and suddenly becomes a patient. Leander partially based the story on his own experiences as an ex-cancer patient. At the age of 23, he was diagnosed with a severe non-Hodgkin lymphoma. For nearly two years, his life was put on hold. At the same time, he discovered that cancer was more than doom and gloom. For Leander, humour was the antidote to all the poison they were injecting into his body. Sense of Tumour won the Prix d’Europe for ‘Best European TV fiction series of the year’ in 2018. Leander is currently working on a new series about another personal and surprising theme