What makes a "foreign film" foreign?

This may seem like a stupid question, except I had a discussion recently that left me kind of puzzled, and I wanted to see if there was a definitive answer to this.

I was recently asked about good foreign horror films, and the movie "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" came up. They responded by saying that the film was actually not foreign.

I did a bit more research into the movie, and it turns out that although it's a Persian language film, it was shot in California with Iranian-American actors, and directed by a British born Iranian-American director. So what makes a foreign film foreign, exactly?

Is the Lord of the Rings a foreign film because it was filmed in New Zealand with some British actors and a director from New Zealand? What happens if a director living in Japan films a movie about Japanese people travelling in the US, and speaking English? Is it still a Japanese film?

Curious to see what people think about this.

Submitted September 20, 2017 at 12:08PM by TXDRMST http://ift.tt/2xnZDqX