Sachs later won acclaim for his dramatic independent films Forty Shades of Blue (2005), Keep the Lights On (2012), Love Is Strange (2014), Little Men (2016), and Passages (2023).

[1] Sachs said he applied to film school at University of Southern California, UCLA and NYU who all rejected him.

[2] Sachs stated, "The first thing I did in 1989 when I came to New York was worked as an assistant on a film called Longtime Companion by the director Norman René, which was about a group of New Yorkers who were confronted with, and confronting, living and dying through the AIDS crisis and it was a very seminal experience, I met a lot of filmmakers who were in the art department or assistants on that film.

The story revolves around a traveling theatrical troupe, made up primarily of gay and lesbian performers, mirrors the troubles of a political and social community through its tight-knit existence.

He returned to film with the relationship drama Love Is Strange (2014) starring John Lithgow, Alfred Molina and Marisa Tomei.

Now he has gone down a generation, almost into Eric Rohmer territory, into the world of younger people who have much less experience of disappointment and compromise.

Peter Debruge of Variety gave the film a positive review writing, "Though Sachs' observations do succeed in personalizing the phenomenon, the reason we go — indeed, the reason we care — is because Little Men is also a story about love, and as Sachs has poignantly noted before, love is strange.

With 2019 drama film, Frankie Sachs cast Isabelle Huppert, Brendan Gleeson and reunited with Greg Kinnear and Marisa Tomei.

The film revolves around an elderly French actress who is in ill health and she decides to spend her last vacation with her family.

Bradshaw compared the film to the works of Eric Rohmer, Woody Allen and Nora Ephron and declared, "Sachs strikes gold with sophisticated love triangle".

[20] In January 2012, Sachs married artist Boris Torres in New York city, a few days before their twins were born.

[23] He appeared in the German documentary Wie ich lernte die Zahlen zu lieben / How I Learned to Love the Numbers (2014) by Oliver Sechting and Max Taubert.

In December 2023, alongside 50 other filmmakers, Sachs signed an open letter published in the French newspaper Libération demanding a ceasefire and an end to the killing of civilians amid the 2023 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, and for a humanitarian corridor into Gaza to be established for humanitarian aid, and the release of hostages.