Django will intercept any ImportError's raised in part files and not have any idea how to display which part file the ImportError came from.
Ex.
#01-base.py
from . import not_there # raises ImportError
The above code will cause django NOT settingsd to display the following
ImportError: Could not import settings 'project.settings' (Is it on sys.path? Is there an import error in the settings file?): No module named not_there