Strike this - turns out it was something completely unrelated. (also, ".py" suffixes)
my file structure is as so:
src /
| main.py
| filehandler.py
my main.py is failing at the line:
import filehander.py
with the error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "main.py", line 7, in <module>
import filehander
ImportError: No module named 'filehander'
Why is python failing to do the simple task of importing a file in the same directory so badly?