I'm trying to run subprocess.call() with unicode filename, and here is simplified problem: n = u'c:\\windows\\notepad.exe ' f = u'c:\\temp\\nèw.txt' subprocess.call(n + f) which raises famous error: UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe8' Encoding to utf-8 produces wrong filename, and mbcs passes filename as new.txt without accent I just can't read any more on this confusing subject and spin in circle. I found here lot of answers for many different problems in past so I thought to join and ask for help myself Thanks