Interview with Director Russ van Aardt
“The Next Chapter – Beneath the Surface of War and Humanity”
In The Next Chapter, filmmaker Russ van Aardt guides audiences beneath the haunting depths of Truk Lagoon, where the wreckage of war has become both a monument to destruction and a mirror reflecting human courage, compassion, and endurance.
What began as an intimate portrait of two intertwined lives soon expanded into a sweeping five-part narrative — each story connected by a single day of devastation: Operation Hailstone, the Allied attack on February 17, 1944.
Merging history with emotion and environmental consciousness, The Next Chapter turns tragedy into meditation — a journey through time, memory, and meaning. In this conversation, van Aardt reflects on how the film evolved, the moments that left a lasting mark, and the message he hopes will echo long after the final frame fades to black.
Q&A with Director Russ van Aardt
1. What do you think influenced the choice of stories presented in The Next Chapter?
Considering the production was to be feature length, we wished to include content to reach as wide an audience as possible.
We knew that the core storyline would appeal to historians and human interest lovers, but we needed to add elements that might also hold the attention of those with interest in environment, conservation, action, travel, reality, intrigue and simple feel-good stories.
This was to be the production framework from the get-go.
2. By what criteria did you opt for these five specific stories, and what connects them?
Our initial intent was to combine only two stories. How a local Trukese boy named Kimiuo Aisek, came to open the 1st dive centre in Truk Lagoon, and, how and why our good friend Tom Campbell discovered this historical treasure trove and ended up visiting it 21 times over a period of 45 years.
These two stories alone, did not satisfy the needs set out in our production framework, but during the early stages of researching them, it became quite clear that the attack on Truk during WW2 would be key to linking them together. More would need to be told about the attack, and why it happened. So WW2 in the Pacific, became the third story element.
The more we researched, the more we realised that the events and extent of WW2 in the Pacific theatre, had remained largely misunderstood, for us personally at least. Our understanding was that WW2 was predominantly a Europe based war. Wasn’t it?
NOT!
So, further research on the Pacific Theatre war was done, and this story ended up as a general time line summery, with one or two detailed elements that related to Truk. These adding some much needed action and tension into the mix.
During multiple deep dives into cross reference research, it soon became clear that there were a myriad of mind bending true stories linked to the Lagoon and the war in the Pacific theatre. One of these related to WW2 wreck research in the lagoon, oil leaks from the wrecks and the possibility of a looming environmental doomsday. Being divers for the past 20 years, my wife Barbara and I, are very conscious of environmental threats to our oceans, and were keen to include a possible learning opportunity into the production. So the looming Global Oil threat from WW2 shipwrecks became the fourth story element.
Further extensive fact verification, lead us to a short article about a ship called Soya, which escaped the WW2 attack on Truck Lagoon. Here, we went off on a bit of a research tangent. Admittedly this happened on more than one occasion. Anyway, Soya’s story unfolded to be a thrilling series of escapes, close calls, triumphs and a gloriously feel-good outcome. We just had to include it, which brought the final production story count to five.
All five stories are connected by “Operation Hailstone”, the WW2 Allied forces Truk Lagoon attack on the 17th of February 1944.
3. Your movie shows human strength and the world suffering from the wars causing impacts as dual themes — what was the method used to strike the right equilibrium among these issues?
Not sure how to answer this one, other than to suggest that war itself is a human state, as is the suffering that it causes. There was no conscious decision to try and balance these elements, but rather just to try and show cause and effect.
4. Did you have any particular moment or incident of a character during shooting that impacted you as an individual?
There was one moment in particular, during our interview with Tom Campbell. While drawing comparisons between Kimiuo’s experience during the Allied forces attack on his home, and Tom’s own memories while fighting in Vietnam almost 60 years ago, he hesitated, suddenly overcome by emotion, and said “.. some things you never forget. You take it with you”. He then had to look away from the camera. We all felt it.
This moment clearly demonstrated to me that the physical and emotional scars, inflicted by war, never actually heal.
