Experiencing Interruptions?

The Defender Of Sitting Ducks

Aaron is in training. He’s training to live a normal life in the outside world.

With a brother who won’t come out of the cardboard tank he has built as his bedroom, and a stepfather who is up to no good in a world of paranoia, he has dedicated himself to becoming stronger and smarter.

Wynn is a leader. He commands the attention of his friends but seeks the approval of his brother Brian. His mother Evie is searching for love, but will settle for a little affection.

Polly belongs somewhere, just not here.

The Defender of Sitting Ducks is a study in loneliness. It is a story of people trying to find where they belong in a world that seems to operate better without them.

  • jeff kao
    Director
    Knowing Nothing Cold 2016
  • jeff kao
    Writer
  • Aaren Stade
    Key Cast
    "Aaron"
  • Jude Bennett
    Key Cast
    "Ben"
  • Evan Feist
    Key Cast
    "Wynn"
  • Caprice Cronin
    Key Cast
    "Polly"
  • Project Type:
    Feature
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 32 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    October 27, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    10,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital 4K
  • Aspect Ratio:
    Cinemascope
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - jeff kao

REVIEWS FOR JEFF KAO

​"Jeff Kao's 'Knowing Nothing Cold' reminded me of Richard Linklater’s films like 'Dazed and Confused' and 'Everybody Wants Some' — the movie follows the daily lives of a group of Midwestern teenagers in the 1970′s. The one way this movie differs from Linklater’s retro teen flicks is that writer/director Jeff Kao’s screenplay only has about a quarter of the words Linklater packs into his chatty films. 'Knowing Nothing Cold' is an impressionistic film that slowly unfolds in a series of loosely connected scenes that don’t constitute a typical forward driving plot. This is the kind of film formula that can only work with interesting characters brought to life with great performances. Luckily, for 'Knowing Nothing Cold‘s' audiences, Kao and his cast fill this film with scene after scene of sincere, affecting, haunting moments. "
- Joe Nolan, Joe Nolan's Insomnia

"Made with love and wisdom, writer-director Jeff Kao’s 'Knowing Nothing Cold' channels bittersweet 70s teen angst with a lively combination of breeziness and exactitude. Kao and his amazing cast capture not just the look and feel of a specific place and time, but the metabolism — the very essence of how it felt. Not that past tense really applies here; the real beauty of this film is how it remains eternally immediate. "
- Jonathan Kiefer, San Francisco Film Critics Circle

​
“Knowing Nothing Cold” embodies a substantial vision and a wholly original voice. It is downright obscene that American festivals have ignored it until now, in favor of fashionable, larger-budgeted trifles that lack the ease, control and poetic efficiency that Kao exhibits here. It is one of the best films of 2017, and is finally (thank the Lord) getting some of the play it deserves."
- Daniel Kremer, Director

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

"One of my main inspirations in making movies is to recapture the sensation, felt as a child, in seeing or experiencing something for the first time in my life.

It is through these instances that we built our memory banks. And it is through these clusters of memories that we view each new thing that happens to us in life.

For most of my life, I’ve felt inexperienced. It always seemed that others around me somehow knew how to behave socially, and that somehow I missed out on the training. My early childhood was spent in a cozy, intimate world inhabited primarily by my sister and mother. It was quiet and calm and felt cloistered. When I started elementary school, it felt as if other children had lived through this already. I wanted to fit in and so I very carefully observed how other children acted. I think it is this early intense curiosity about the way people relate to each other that most informs my films. The distance between people and how each of us deals with the resulting vertigo fascinates me and seems mirrored directly in the relationship between filmmaker and audience. What meant everything to me, could mean nothing to you, but it could mean something."