Carmen Thompson

Carmen is a film programmer, curator and cultural producer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. She works freelance and consultants across programming, audiences, festivals, training and development, funding and distribution, both in the UK and internationally. Her interests centre around cinema from the African continent and the Black diaspora, perhaps most specifically at their intersections with non-fiction storytelling.

Carmen currently works as Programming & Audience Manager for multi-award winning film exhibition & distribution company We Are Parable where she leads on nationwide and international projects, including the recent release of Cannes Competition title Banel & Adama (Ramata-Toulaye Sy, 2023) in the UK and Ireland. She is also a Programme Consultant for a number of film festivals and industry markets, currently Sheffield DocFest, Red Sea Film Festival and Durban FilmMart.

In her nearly 10 years in film exhibition and distribution, Carmen has worked with a range of organisations including European Film Market, AfroBerlin, Africa in Motion Film Festival (Co-director, 2020), Realness Institute, Wellcome, Scottish Documentary Institute, The Africa Channel, New Black Film Collective, Cinema Rediscovered and London Film School, and has recently served on film juries for BlackStar Film Festival, Cork International Film Festival and Leeds International Film Festival.

Carmen is on the boards of Document Film Festival (as Chair), Glasgow Film and the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA).

She is a voting member of BAFTA Scotland.