Leandro Matos

Leandro Matos is a Brazilian screenwriter based in Toronto with over 100 hours of produced content for television and film. With almost 200 writing credits, he has also written for corporate and promotional videos, and has extensive experience in project development.

He was part of the writing team of two series for Disney Plus, All the Same... Or Not and Aruna's Magic, released in 2022 and 2023, respectively. He participated in the development of Samantha!, Netflix's first Brazilian comedy series, adapted the variety series Drunk History for Brazil, which helped double Comedy Central's audience in the country and served as Executive Story Editor for the first season of If I Were You The Series. He was a co-showrunner of the comedy series Os Figuras and De Cabelo em Pé, both created by him.

Leandro worked for 5 years as development coordinator at Total Filmes, one of the biggest production companies in the Brazil, where he wrote 5 feature and 4 series, in addition to supervising the development of several projects. His work at Total went far beyond development, actively participating in all stages of the company's projects, from fundraising to establishing trusting relations with networks and film distributors, to participating in on-set decisions and rewrites. He also following the editing process very closely and helped build the marketing campaigns for all the films and shows.

With more than 15 series under his belt, Leandro began his career writing on the series Cilada, on Multishow, and ventured into different formats. He was a story producer on the reality show First Dates for Band; wrote the fifteenth season of the lifestyle show Superbonita on GNT and the travel show GPS for Glitz; and was a staff writer on the morning daily show Encontro com Fátima Bernardes, from Globo, the second biggest broadcaster in the planet.

Apart from his work on TV, Leandro has written 5 feature films. The romantic comedy Love.com is available on Netflix worldwide and his latest film, Letting Go!, starring Glória Pires and Maísa, was one of the Top 10 biggest films of 203 in Brazilian cinema.

With Degrees in Film Studies and in Writing for TV, Leandro immersed himself in the study writing, also graduating from Darcy Ribeiro Film School, one of the most cherished film schools in Rio. He took the Story and Genre classes with Robert McKee, and in 2014, his series Bachelor's Guidebook was selected by Columbia University for the first writing intensive class in Rio de Janeiro, where he had the chance to write a pilot under the guidance of showrunners and Columbia Professors Joe Cacaci and Trey Ellis.

Leandro immigrated to Canada in 2018, and has several projects in development, including O Caso Carlinhos, which won a Government development fund in 2019. His drama pilot Millennials was selected by the Writers Guild of Canada as the Script of the Month in November 2023. Leandro participated in his first Canadian writers room in 2022, for marblemedia, and he is currently developing several projects for the Canadian market.

In 2021, he was chosen to participate for the first cohort of BIPOC TV & Film's Showrunner Bootcamp. In 2022 he was selected by CMPA for their Diverse Producers Mentoring Program, working for 5 months as a development coordinator at 100 Dragons Media. In 2023, Leandro was selected by the Canadian Academy to be part of their Executive Residency program, being by Paige Murray, Executive in Charge of Development at CBC and received a grant from the Toronto Arts Council to work on the development of his feature My Father's Legacy under the mentorship of Blain Watters, screenwriter, best known for his coming of age feature Sleeping Giant.