Carmel is an award-winning writer and director for screen and stage. Her most recent Screen Ireland/BAI funded feature film Float Like A Butterfly premiered at Toronto International Film Festival September 2018 where it won the FIPRESCI Discovery International Federation of Critics Award before coming home to Cork International Film Festival to win the Audience Award, the Writer’s Guild Zebbie Award for Best Feature Screenplay among others.

Her debut feature film SNAP, funded by Screen Ireland, premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and won Critic’s Choice Award At Karlovy-Vary Film Festival, ‘Best Irish Feature’ and ‘Best Director’ at the Dublin Critics’ Circle Awards and the audience vote for Best Film at Montevideo International Film Festival. In 2011, she was also awarded the ‘Irish Times Irish Theatre Best New Play’ award for the Abbey, Ireland’s National Theatre’s production of her play B FOR BABY. She was commissioned to write a four-part drama Series for RTE television, ONE DOWN. Carmel has also participated in the Guiding Lights scheme for filmmakers, mentored by John Madden, and premiered four new plays, BEST MAN, WITNESS, SALT MOUNTAIN and THE REMAINS OF MAISIE DUGGAN (Abbey Theatre) which were great hits with audiences. She was awarded several prizes for Academic Excellence from the English Dept. Trinity College Dublin but credits being one of twelve children as “her real training as a dramatist”.