python - file not rendering in django template -

i have code supposed render file svn email

command = 'svn cat -r {} "{}{}"'.format(svn_revision, svn_repo, filename) file_content = subprocess.popen(command, shell=true, stdout=subprocess.pipe).stdout.read()  context = {     'file_content': file_content, }  print file_content  email = get_template('file_email/file_email.txt').render(context(context))  print email 

the email template (for now) just:

{{file_content|safe}} 

• the first print statement dumps file expected.
• the second print statement prints nothing.
• the template rendered, if put words around tag show up.

it happens files (others work fine) , seems encoding problem. notepad++ believes offending files encoded "ucs-2 little endian" whereas ones work "utf-8 without bom".

how can reliably dump file, regardless of encoding, template?