diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index b33576f540..c4b030c73f 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -48,6 +48,7 @@ setup(
         "Pillow>=2.3.0",
         "beautifulsoup4>=4.3.2",
         "lxml>=3.3.0",
+        'Unidecode>=0.04.14',
         "BeautifulSoup==3.2.1",  # django-compressor gets confused if we have lxml but not BS3 installed
     ],
     zip_safe=False,
diff --git a/wagtail/wagtailimages/models.py b/wagtail/wagtailimages/models.py
index d30f969ad5..61082c2cbc 100644
--- a/wagtail/wagtailimages/models.py
+++ b/wagtail/wagtailimages/models.py
@@ -14,6 +14,8 @@ from django.utils.html import escape
 from django.conf import settings
 from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy  as _
 
+from unidecode import unidecode
+
 from wagtail.wagtailadmin.taggable import TagSearchable
 from wagtail.wagtailimages import image_ops
 
@@ -25,8 +27,9 @@ class AbstractImage(models.Model, TagSearchable):
         folder_name = 'original_images'
         filename = self.file.field.storage.get_valid_name(filename)
 
+        # do a unidecode in the filename and then
         # replace non-ascii characters in filename with _ , to sidestep issues with filesystem encoding
-        filename = "".join((i if ord(i) < 128 else '_') for i in filename)
+        filename = "".join((i if ord(i) < 128 else '_') for i in unidecode(filename))
 
         while len(os.path.join(folder_name, filename)) >= 95:
             prefix, dot, extension = filename.rpartition('.')