These are alien to mainstream sensibilities and/or very artistic/academic/specific in purpose. Some names here are important for history of film, but their films are still inaccessible and names unknown to non-cinephiles. Do not attempt to relate with normal human beings about them.
Yasujirô Ozu (Japan) - Ingmar Bergman (Sweden) - Jean Cocteau (France) - Jean-Luc Godard (France) - Jean Renoir (France) - Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy) - Krzysztof Kieslowski (Poland) - Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Germany) - Vsevolod Pudovkin (URSS) - Sergei Eisenstein (URSS) - Luis Buñuel (Spain) - Max Ophüls (Germany) - Andrei Tarkovsky (URSS) - Gaspar Noé (Argentina) - Eric Rohmer (France) - Elem Klimov (URSS) - D.W. Griffith (USA) - Robert Wiene (Germany) - Carl Theodor Dreyer (France) - F.W. Murnau (German)