Screenwriter and director of film, theater, and television. Distinguished research professor at UCLA Department of Film, Television and Digital Media. Artistic Director of the SUNDANCE Filmmakers Lab since 1997.

Gazdag moved to the United States to assume his responsibilities as area head of the newly created Film and TV Production Program at UCLA in 1993. He worked as creative advisor at the Maurits Binger Film Institute in Amsterdam from 2002 until the end of its training program in 2015. He has worked with young screenwriters at the Script Station of the Berlinale Talents since 2006 and with young actors, directors and screenwriters as founding advisor of Film Stage Studio at Sarajevo Talents since 2015. As Head of Studies he has been instrumental in the creation of the Incubator Phoenix Project, training script consultants in collaboration between The Czech Film Fund and AMU/MIDPOINT. He regularly participates as an advisor in Story Camp organized by Script to Screen of New Zealand screenwriters since 2015.

Gazdag wrote and directed feature films, documentaries, television and theater mostly in his native Hungary, where most of his work has been banned for different periods during Communism and has been denied foreign exhibition, some of them have been banned again in 2012. Gazdag has been named one of the ten best film teachers in the United States of America by Daily Variety in 2010. He is member of the European Film Academy. The Westword International Film Festival honored Gazdag with “Recognition of Outstanding Achievement in the Art of Film” in 1989. The Budapest International Documentary Festival honored him with Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. During the Fall Semester 2018 he was the Ellen Maria Gorrissen Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, working on his screenplay entitled "Promotional Trip to Hell".