Actors Revathy, Padmapriya resign from Association of Malayalam Movie Artistes

Actors Revathy and Padmapriya resigned from the primary membership of the Association of Malayalam Movie Artistes (AMMA) on Monday. “This may look like one more chapter in the ongoing AMMA saga. It is not. Our resignation is not in haste and not about a single incident,” they said in a joint statement online.

“For nearly a decade, the ask was simple. Safer workplaces, dignity, accountability and equal treatment -- the minimum every member deserves, and values we genuinely believed all of us could unite around. The price of asking, for us, has been silence and distance. From colleagues, from friends, from spaces that once felt like home. Still, we stayed. For hope has a remarkable ability to survive disappointment,” they said.

‘Escaping accountability’

The actors, who are the founding members of the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC), said the resignations that followed the release of the Hema Committee report on the problems faced by women in Malayalam film industry were not an act of principle. “They were an escape from accountability. Once the attention faded, the same old order returned. Power keeps finding new ways to protect itself. The faces change. The methods change. But the structures enabling inequality remain untouched,” they said.

They pointed out that AMMA was meant to stand as a collective voice for all actors. “But it has become increasingly shaped by patriarchy and power politics, weakening its founding ideals. Walking away for us is not defeat. It is self-respect,” they said.

“We have unwavering faith that the Malayalam film industry can become what it should be, where women do not fight the same battles their seniors did. That belief never depended on a membership,” said the actors, who were among the WCC members who had earlier blamed the association’s leadership for not standing with the survivor in the 2017 actor rape case.