diff --git a/Scripts/check_no_executed_cell.py b/Scripts/check_no_executed_cell.py
index 7a91631ca992d1d15e4e44b2419df1dbc26376d6..93ca3dbf6ec23b8926deeb699c634c2d28b8b9b6 100644
--- a/Scripts/check_no_executed_cell.py
+++ b/Scripts/check_no_executed_cell.py
@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-#!python
-
 import argparse
 import sys
 from typing import Optional
@@ -8,7 +6,7 @@ from typing import Sequence
 
 def find_executed_cell(filename):
     """Read the file and check whether there is a line with "execution_count" and a non null value."""
-    stream = open(filename)
+    stream = open(filename, encoding="utf8", errors='ignore')
 
     executed_cells = [line.strip("\n,\" ") for line in stream if "execution_count" in line and "null" not in line ]