As we are inching ever closer to the release date of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, the last instalment (or rather the first part of it) of the dystopian sci-fi film trilogy The Hunger Games, let’s have a small taster of what we know for certain and what we can very likely expect.

President Coin, leader of District 13, played by Julianne Moore, is vindictive and rather uncompromising character

Over the course of the first two parts of the trilogy we learned, by means of various hints and clues, that following the terrible war causing death and destruction on an unprecedented scale, the nation of Panem, which was created in place of the former countries of Mexico, United States and Canada, now encompasses the whole continent of North America. Panem’s deeply divided society has a two class structure, where the few rich live a life of excess and decadence in the Capitol and the poor majority, living in the Districts 1-12, are kept in destitution, with extremely high levels of poverty and malnutrition.

About 75 years earlier, several Districts rebelled against the corrupt rule of the Capitol's oppressive government, but this rebellion, called the Dark Days, was ultimately defeated, District 13 which led the uprising was (supposedly) obliterated, and the remaining Twelve Districts were subdued into submission. The titular Hunger Games were concocted by the Capitol as an annual event to punish the citizens of the Districts for their rebellion and at the same time remind everybody of the consequences of rebelling against the absolute power of the Capitol.

Katniss will always remain a small, but bright, flame of hope for the better future in the darkness of oppression

In the last minutes of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, we saw Katniss awakening in an aircraft and finding herself in the company of her mentor Haymitch, fellow tribute Finnick and Plutarch Heavensbee – the Head Gamemaker, who reveals himself as an undercover leader of the rebellion movement in the Districts and the mastermind behind the plan to break the tributes out of the fighting arena. Distraught Katniss also learns that Peeta and Johanna have been captured and are in the hands of despotic President Snow, after which she tries to relieve her anger and pain by attacking Haymitch and has to be sedated by Plutarch. When she later comes to (presumably in District 13) she finds her best friend Gale Hawthorne by her side. Gale tells her that she passed out and was unconscious for several days. He also informs her that District 12 has been firebombed by the Capitol hovercraft and was utterly destroyed, though the rebels have managed to take her family to safety at the very last moment.

While she was still aboard the rebel hovercraft, astonished Katniss learned from Plutarch that they are bound for District 13, which was in fact not destroyed, and is now, as it was in the past, spearheading the rebellion against the corrupt Capitol.

It transpires that before the Dark Days war, District 13 specialised in nuclear technology and weapons manufacturing. During the Dark Days, District 13 led one of the major forces of the rebellion. As it had control of the main nuclear weapons stockpile, the Capitol was, though reluctantly, forced to agree to a cease-fire under the condition that the inhabitants of District 13 will remain concealed in an underground city, after the Capitol forces’ bombardment destroyed everything above ground. The fragile truce, based on the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, remained in force for the whole 75 years, while the Capitol’s propaganda machine kept spreading the lie that District 13 was completely destroyed, with nothing but wasteland in its former place (so as not to give hope to the other Districts). The leader of District 13 is an uncompromising President Alma Coin who aspires to succeed Coriolanus Snow as a President of Panem.

Without spoiling too much, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay will see Katniss reluctantly adjusting to a strict, military-like lifestyle in the underground city of District 13, which has been organising the new rebellion against the tyranny of the Capitol. She will find here new friends but also new adversaries. She will clash with the President Coin over their different views on the impending war between the Districts and the Capitol. But crucially, as before, she will remain a small, though bright, flame of hope for the better future in the darkness of oppression. As the face of the rebellion, she is considered far too valuable an asset to be lost in a battle and as such is, to her great frustration, kept out of actual combat. Katniss eventually, though very reluctantly, settles to her new role and agrees to act as a poster child of the rebellion: "Mockingjay".

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 will be in cinemas from 21 November 2014.