diff --git a/pelican/generator.py b/pelican/generator.py
index d5b1b581..69e80116 100644
--- a/pelican/generator.py
+++ b/pelican/generator.py
@@ -1,10 +1,15 @@
-from docutils import core
-from datetime import datetime
-import re
+# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
 import os
-from jinja2 import Environment, FileSystemLoader
+import re
+from codecs import open
+from datetime import datetime
+from docutils import core
 from functools import partial
 
+from jinja2 import Environment, FileSystemLoader
+
+import rstdirectives   # import the directives to have pygments support
+
 _TEMPLATES = ('index', 'tag', 'tags', 'article', 'category', 'categories',
               'archives')
 _DIRECT_TEMPLATES = ('index', 'tags', 'categories', 'archives')
@@ -32,7 +37,7 @@ def generate_output(files, templates_path=None, output_path=None, markup=None):
     # for each file, get the informations.
     for f in files:
         f = os.path.abspath(f)
-        article = Article(file(f).read(), markup)
+        article = Article(open(f, encoding='utf-8').read(), markup)
         articles.append(article)
         if hasattr(article, 'date'):
             update_dict(months, article.date.month, article)
@@ -69,7 +74,7 @@ def generate_file(path, name, template, context, **kwargs):
         os.makedirs(os.path.dirname(filename))
     except Exception:
         pass
-    with open(filename, 'w') as f:
+    with open(filename, 'w', encoding='utf-8') as f:
         f.write(output)
     print filename
 
@@ -136,7 +141,10 @@ class Article(object):
         for key, value in parse_metadatas(string).items():
             setattr(self, key, value)
         if markup == 'rest':
-            rendered_content = core.publish_parts(string, writer_name='html')
+            extra_params = {'input_encoding': 'unicode',
+                            'initial_header_level': '2'}
+            rendered_content = core.publish_parts(string, writer_name='html',
+                settings_overrides=extra_params)
             self.title = rendered_content.get('title')
             self.content = rendered_content.get('body')
     
diff --git a/pelican/templates/article.html b/pelican/templates/article.html
index e69de29b..c33626f4 100644
--- a/pelican/templates/article.html
+++ b/pelican/templates/article.html
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+<h1>{{ article.title }}</h1>
+{% for tag in article.tags %}
+    {{ tag }}
+{% endfor %}
+{{ article.content }}
diff --git a/pelican/templates/index.html b/pelican/templates/index.html
index 1aa9e903..6008ecf2 100644
--- a/pelican/templates/index.html
+++ b/pelican/templates/index.html
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
 {% for article in articles %}
-    {{ article.title }}
+    <h2>{{ article.title }}</h2>
     {{ article.content }}
 {% endfor %}
diff --git a/samples/content/super_article.rst b/samples/content/super_article.rst
index f3358695..4146fbe8 100644
--- a/samples/content/super_article.rst
+++ b/samples/content/super_article.rst
@@ -11,3 +11,11 @@ This is a simple title
 ======================
 
 And here comes the cool stuff.
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+   >>> from ipdb import set trace
+   >>> set_trace()
+
+→ And now try with some utf8 hell: ééé
+