7. Federico Fellini
For someone just getting into foreign film, the name Fellini seems to be omnipresent due to the outrageous number of classic films he put out and because he was at the forefront of filmmaking right at the peak of art-house cinema. Just a short list of his most acclaimed films includes classics like La Strada, Night of Cabiria, La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, Juliet of the Spirits, Satyricon, and Amarcord with many other films being well received as well. Fellini was the best ever at depicting the dreams and fantasies of his protagonists and his propensity for cinematic extravagance led to the term "Felliniesque" being applied to similar films and directors. Inspired by psychologists like Carl Jung, Fellini delved deeper into the dream state and unconscious mind than any other famous director and as a result his films were unlike anyone else's at the time. His creative peak overlapped with the French New Wave and the work of famous directors like Bergman, Antonioni, and Tarkovsky but at the time, Fellini was as big as any of them. Although the influence of Fellini is vast, and movies like 8 1/2 regularly place among the top twenty films of all time, many of his contemporaries have aged better than Fellini, so although his work is enormously important, he still is bested by six other directors.