Ultrasphinx and utf8 searching

I am having a serious problem with ultrasphinx and not sure where to turn for help!

We have an object that has this in its is_indexed field (with other things):

              {:class_name => "Participant", :field => "name", :table_alias => "p1",                 :as => "actor", :association_sql => "LEFT OUTER JOIN films_participants ON (films.`id` = films_participants.`film_id`) LEFT OUTER JOIN participants AS p1 ON (p1.`id` = films_participants.`participant_id`)"},

Now, if I try and search on something with the query "actor:Depp" I get back a lot of films with someone named depp associated with them. But, if I try and search for "actor:Dúrcal" I get back nothing, though I have several people with that name in the database and they are properly associated with film.

To me it looks like concatenate fields are not properly searching on that utf8 strings....

I say that because some of our films have utf8 in the titles. The title is stored on the table itself and is accessed like this: :fields => [{:field => :title, :facet => true, :sortable => true}]

So... what is happening to those fields it is pulling in?

Help!!!