Revathy and Padmapriya resign from AMMA in powerful statement: 'The price of asking has been met by silence'

After nearly a decade of remaining within the Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA) while pushing for reforms from the inside, actors Revathy and Padmapriya have resigned from their primary membership, saying the organisation is "not ready to change."

The actors announced their decision in a joint Instagram post on Monday, stressing that their exit was neither impulsive nor driven by a single controversy.

“Today, we are resigning from our primary membership of AMMA. Not in anger, not in haste. Between us we have given decades to this industry, and we care where it goes next,” the actors wrote.

“For years the ask was simple: safety, dignity, accountability and equal treatment. What we met instead was silence, and the slow realisation that this institution, as it stands, is not ready to change.”

They also made it clear that their resignation would not affect their work in Malayalam cinema.

“Malayalam cinema will always be ours to love and to work for. That never depended on a membership,” they wrote, signing off with, “See you at the cinemas, Revathy and Padmapriya.”

The post included a detailed statement explaining their decision.

“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. For nearly a decade, the ask was simple. Safer workplaces. Dignity. Accountability. 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. The resignations after the Hema Committee Report 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. AMMA.”

The resignations are particularly significant because Revathy and Padmapriya had, until now, chosen to remain within AMMA even as several colleagues quit in protest over the years.

Both are founding members of the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC), formed in 2017 after the assault on a female actor. In 2020, when then general secretary Edavela Babu compared a survivor who had left the association to a dead person and Parvathy Thiruvothu resigned in protest, the two actors stayed on. Instead of resigning, they wrote to every member of the leadership asking them to publicly state their position.

They maintained that approach even after the Hema Committee report was released in 2024. The report exposed widespread harassment and discrimination in the Malayalam film industry and led to the resignation of AMMA's entire 17-member executive committee headed by Mohanlal.

At the time, Padmapriya said she believed resigning was not the answer.

“I think I am a part of that association. My opinion is that resignation will not solve this. Me and Revathy chechi believe that the truth will come to light,” she had said, adding that many people contacted them after the Hema Committee report to say they finally understood the WCC's position.

Their announcement also comes just days after Shweta Menon, AMMA's first woman president, resigned along with other office-bearers following a dispute within the actors' body.

Despite ending their membership, both actors indicated they will continue working in the industry. Revathy, a National Award-winning actor and filmmaker, has worked across Malayalam, Tamil and other film industries for more than four decades, while Padmapriya has remained one of the WCC's most consistent public voices since the collective's formation.