This chapter examines Hungarian film policy in the late 1960s within the broader context of economic and cultural reforms. Rather than framing policy as a simple opposition between ideology and market forces, it highlights the interwoven goals of political-ideological education, cultural emancipation, and economic rationality. The analysis explores how debates over audience differentiation, declining cinema attendance, the rise of modernist/auteur cinema, and the pressures of the Hungarian New Economic Mechanism reshaped strategies in film production, financing, and distribution. Institutional actors—particularly the Ministry of Culture, party organs, distributors, and filmmakers—negotiated between demands for popular appeal, artistic innovation, and political responsibility. The chapter demonstrates that socialist film policy was dynamic, marked by continuous redesign and ambivalence rather than stability or linear progression. Hungarian film culture of this period illustrates both the achievements and contradictions of attempting to create a socialist mass culture that was at once ideological, educational, and commercially viable.