diff --git a/lib/gollum/git_access.rb b/lib/gollum/git_access.rb
index 9fe5298e..3df2bc89 100644
--- a/lib/gollum/git_access.rb
+++ b/lib/gollum/git_access.rb
@@ -158,6 +158,7 @@ module Gollum
     def tree!(sha)
       tree  = @repo.git.native(:ls_tree,
         {:r => true, :l => true, :z => true}, sha)
+      tree.force_encoding("UTF-8")
       items = tree.split("\0").inject([]) do |memo, line|
         memo << parse_tree_line(line)
       end