‘Friends’ to open Sundance fest

The 2006 Sundance Film Festival will open with “Friends With Money,” an ensemble drama with Jennifer Aniston from writer-director Nicole Holofcener, whose film “Walking and Talking” played at the 1996 festival.

Set to run in Park City, Utah, from Jan. 19 to 29, the nation’s leading festival for movies made outside the studio system will now feature a closing-night film. That film will be “Alpha Dog,” filmmaker Nick Cassavetes’ drama starring Emile Hirsch based on a recent kidnapping and murder of a 15-year-old.

More than 3,000 features were submitted for next year’s festival, which includes a combined 200 dramas, documentaries and short films.

In addition to “Friends With Money” and “Alpha Dog,” the festival’s premieres will include Terry Zwigoff’s “Art School Confidential,” Jonathan Demme’s “Neil Young Heart of Gold,” Michel Gondry’s “The Science of Sleep” and Wim Wenders’ “Don’t Come Knocking.”

-- John Horn