--- a/mercurial/templatefilters.py	Sun Dec 27 17:16:45 2015 +0900
+++ b/mercurial/templatefilters.py	Sun Dec 27 17:45:05 2015 +0900
@@ -377,6 +377,10 @@
     """:emailuser: Any text. Returns the user portion of an email address."""
     return util.emailuser(text)
 
+def utf8(text):
+    """:utf8: Any text. Converts from the local character encoding to UTF-8."""
+    return encoding.fromlocal(text)
+
 def xmlescape(text):
     text = (text
             .replace('&', '&')
@@ -422,6 +426,7 @@
     "urlescape": urlescape,
     "user": userfilter,
     "emailuser": emailuser,
+    "utf8": utf8,
     "xmlescape": xmlescape,
 }