Hot Shots 2022: Alex Fountain

Bafta-nominated movie Boiling Point captures the relentless pressure on staff in a busy restaurant kitchen in a single take. Tensions simmer as the increasingly fraught head chef Andy (played by Stephen Graham) struggles to keep it together.

Plunging viewers inside Andy’s dark night of the soul was editor Alex Fountain.

His working relationship with actor-director Philip Barantini has proved particularly fruitful, with three shorts, music videos for singers Sam Fender and Sam Tompkins, three films and two TV projects under their belt.

Having collaborated on Barantini’s original Boiling Point short and then the feature-length version, the pair continued their working relationship with Dancing Ledge’s similarly fraught BBC1 drama The Responder, which won Best Drama at the 2022 Edinburgh TV Awards. The Liverpool-set drama, starring Martin Freeman, launched to almost 10 million viewers and has been commissioned for a second series.

Fountain and Barantini are now working on World Productions’ ITV five-part medical thriller Malpractice and the film Accused. Fountain has also directed four shorts of his own and recently worked on director Ross McCall’s debut feature – action thriller A Violent Man.

“Alex is an incredibly talented individual,” says Barantini. “He has come on board my projects at an early stage and has had a huge input into their style, tone and music. Alex is a true collaborator. I think he’s a huge talent and one to watch out for.”