If you have a non-ASCII .py file without encoding declaration, then you can't normally import it:

$ python --version
Python 2.7.6

$ python -c 'import test'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
  File "test.py", line 1
SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\xc2' in file test.py on line 1, but no encoding declared; see http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html for details


However, "python -m" happily imports such files:

$ python -m test
¡Hello world!