The Team
Our Story
4MileCircus formed in 2016 when filmmakers Sean Mannion and Nicole Solomon decided to join forces in the name of making cool projects. Initially meeting on the set of mutual friend Lars Fuch’s short film Honk! Honk!, Nicole and Sean developed a strong working relationship while teaching together at I Was There, an organization that provided therapeutic filmmaking workshops to veterans coping with posttraumatic stress, and built on that when Sean invited Nicole to be part of the production of his feature film debut, Meme. Between them, Sean and Nicole have several decades of professional media-making under their belts and have worked together since 2016 on feature and short films, music videos, commercials, podcasts, live events and more.
Sean Mannion was raised in Anchorage, Alaska. Prior to moving into media production he spent years working in local and state politics and enterprise level software-as-a-service development and support. He moved to Brooklyn in 2008 and immediately began working in independent video production. Sean has worked as everything from a set PA to a red carpet videographer and from reality show tape logger to short film visual effects editor. He has written and directed over a dozen short films and has lent his hand to many more films and series beyond that. His first feature, Meme, is now available on multiple platforms.
Nicole Solomon was raised in Ithaca, New York. She has worked extensively in education and media production, frequently partnering with nonprofits and community organizations to make social justice-oriented projects and teach empowerment through filmmaking. Nicole has a Masters’ in Film from City College of New York and is currently a media instructor and artist-in-residence at BRIC. Her short film, Small Talk, enjoyed a successful festival run and won multiple awards, including the Golden Kleene Award from the Arse Electronika Festival on Sex and Tech, the first film to be given that honor. Since then she has directed the award-winning horror short Mare , the Joan of Arc segment of the Bring Us Your Women anthology project, historical drama Sanctuary (co-directed with Small Talk DP Jeanette Bears), and the vampire thriller It’s Normal, among music videos, PSAs, and other projects. In 2017 she was awarded the Mary Pickford Award for Women in the Art and Business of Film, and has served as a producer on projects ranging from campy horror film The Gaze for Congested Cat to the recent documentary Cat-astreophe for The New Yorker. She currently co-hosts and co-produces The Celluloid Mirror podcast with Sean Mannion and is in postproduction on her next film, Reveal.
Yessica Curiel Montoya is an experienced DP with an extensive background as a gaffer for independent features, documentaries, and commercials. Her work as cinematographer has screened in film festivals around the world, and received a Kodak Eastman Award in 2014. She’s a Mexican immigrant, and a proud Harlem resident in New York City.