Texts with accented characters being saved as NULL with PHP-FPM and MySQL

Hi there, folks.

I'm facing this issue for more than a week without any clue what to do. I've posted it on Stack Overflow and also spent sometime discussing it on #php at irc.freenode.net. I was advised to seek for more CI specialized support, so here I am.

I'm going to leave the URL for the Stack Overflow question, is that ok? I think this way you folks can read what I was asked about.

Here is it:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5575...-and-mysql

Any tip?

Thanks a lot!