Toronto Police investigate director Reeyaz Habib’s ‘suspicious’ death

Toronto Police have opened a homicide investigation after local filmmaker Reeyaz Habib was found dead in the city’s West End on June 8.

Habib, a graduate of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, recently completed his directorial debut, the comedy The fat lady Sriracha, which is in post production. Toronto Police Services said Wednesday that the homicide and missing persons unit was investigating a “suspicious death” in the Liberty Village neighborhood on June 8 and asked the public for help in establishing the filmmaker’s whereabouts between 4 and 8 June.

“Reeyaz was a wonderfully kind spirit, full of enthusiasm for life and telling the complex but necessary stories within it. He brought us all together to make a lifelong dream come true. We are extremely grateful for the time and trust we have had with him and look forward to honoring his legacy by ensuring his story is told.” The fat lady Sriracha said producer Jaskaran Singh in a statement.

The fat lady Sriracha stars Milcania Diaz-Rojas, Carlo Rota, Richard Fitzpatrick, Benjamin Sutherland and Angela Besharah and follows an aspiring chef with little interest in family, but who becomes a surrogate mother to a loan shark to pay off her dead father’s gambling debts.

The film is based on the screenplay by Habib and is also produced by Shachi Sharma and associate producer by Rikhil Bahadur and Kate Hornsby. Game Theory Films will distribute in Canada. The film was selected by Game Theory Film’s Black Indigenous and People of Color Fund.