He is best known for his "Private Hungary" series of award winning films based on home movies from the 1930s and 1960s, which document ordinary lives that were soon to be ruptured by an extraordinary historical trauma that occurs off screen.

In the late 1970s and '80s he collaborated with the contemporary music ensemble Group 180 [1], at the same time he started to work in the Béla Balázs Filmstudio.

In 2002 The Getty Research Institute held an exhibit The Danube Exodus: Rippling Currents of the River.

His international debut came with the Bartos Family (1988)[2], which was awarded the Grand Prix at the World Wide Video Festival in The Hague (1990).

Forgács received the 2007 Erasmus Prize, which is "awarded to a person or institution which has made an exceptionally important contribution to culture in Europe.