Most real-world UNIX systems only support ASCII-compatible encodings. There's no reason not to solve the problem on such systems by using os.fsdecode().
Huh?!
Is my Ubuntu derivative not "real world"?
666-tmp % uname -a
Linux popkdm 5.3.0-7629-generic #31~1581628825~19.10~f90b7d5-Ubuntu SMP Fri Feb 14 19:56:45 UTC x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
667-tmp % touch ✗—Not-ASCII
668-tmp % ls ✗*
✗—Not-ASCII
672-tmp % ls ✗* | hexdump -C
00000000 e2 9c 97 e2 80 94 4e 6f 74 2d 41 53 43 49 49 0a |......Not-ASCII.|
00000010
Keeping medicines from the bloodstreams of the sick; food
from the bellies of the hungry; books from the hands of the
uneducated; technology from the underdeveloped; and putting
advocates of freedom in prisons. Intellectual property is
to the 21st century what the slave trade was to the 16th.